Dangerous Waters Read Online Free PDF

he’d done, and worse, what he’d threatened. Zurenne would go and watch him hanged and she’d ignore any disapproving whispers at such unseemly behaviour in a wife and mother.
    She steeled herself to look up at Minelas, all innocent enquiry. ‘May I ask what your business in Relshaz is?’
    ‘Your business is your children and household, my lady.’ His pale blue eyes hardened with voiceless threat. ‘Nothing else need concern you.’
    ‘Of course.’ Zurenne looked down at her embroidery again.
    He didn’t look like a villain, this stranger who’d turned the manor she’d come to as a bride into a prison for her widowhood. He was slender and handsome with golden hair, seldom seen in these regions. But those fine features were a mask for depravity that Zurenne hadn’t imagined possible.
    What wickedness had he wrought elsewhere? Who else was hunting him, intent on bloody vengeance? That was the explanation, Zurenne had concluded, for him hiding out here in this remote barony on Caladhria’s western coast. Since that darkest day when he’d come to tell her that her life was ruined, that her beloved husband was dead, he’d only left to attend the Summer Solstice Parliament. He’d had to do that to secure his false claim on the Halferan estates and to present affidavits from the neighbouring lords of Tallat and Karpis that they had no objection to his grant of guardianship.
    Zurenne focused fiercely on her stitches. Halferan had been the truest love of her life, save only for their daughters. He had sworn to protect and to cherish her when they wed and she’d never had cause to doubt him. In every crisis, she had turned to him. Whatever challenges arose, he met them.
    That didn’t lessen her rage at him for dying. For dying after he’d brought this man among them. Who was this Minelas of Grynth, with his promises and deceits? As sly and destructive as a fox in a henhouse.
    Halferan had only said the mysterious newcomer knew how to defeat the corsairs. Zurenne need no longer worry about the raids on their coast each summer, the plundering of helpless villages, their tenants left homeless and hungry even if they managed to escape the slavers’ chains.
    She need not concern herself with the details. It was a lord’s duty to protect his family, his home and his people while it was her wifely duty to ensure his comfort, to manage his household, to nurture and educate his children.
    So Zurenne had done as she had always been taught. Now that unquestioning loyalty saw her a prisoner in her own home, subject to the whims of a stranger and insulted by insolent servants whom she couldn’t dismiss.
    She looked over at Starrid, as if struck by a sudden thought. ‘You must give Master Minelas a cage of courier doves. So he can send us any urgent word. So he can give you a day’s warning to make ready for his return.’
    The stocky man’s fleshy face coloured unattractively. ‘I, that is to say, Master Minelas—’ His apology foundered in confusion.
    Minelas waved that away. ‘I have no need of courier doves.’
    Zurenne sighed and gazed at Starrid as though saddened and disappointed.
    ‘Courier doves are none of your concern,’ the steward said brusquely.
    ‘Indeed.’ She returned her attention meekly to her sewing.
    Looking up through her eyelashes, she saw Starrid was looking uneasily after Minelas as the blond man prowled the room, picking up music from the clavichord, closing the marquetry lid on its honeywood and ebony keys. Now he was rearranging the dried flowers on the mantel shelf. He did this every time he came, uninvited, to her apartments, to underline his mastery of every aspect of her life.
    How did Starrid stifle his conscience, knowing he’d betrayed his dead lord so foully? After all the chances which Halferan had given him, to make good on his persistent failures. Inability to manage the courier bird loft up above the manor steward’s dwelling was merely one of the man’s inadequacies. Was